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years and you still don’t understand how any of this works. I am an actress and the head of a film studio. I am not a hit man. I don’t go around baring my fangs whenever someone becomes an inconvenience. And I am not going to kill someone just because you ask me to!”
    “But Ovsanna—”
    “Now, look, I don’t have time for this right now. And I definitely do not want to see this person in my house. It’s bad enough I can smell him. Get him out of the guesthouse. Put him in a hotel. Take him to the studio tomorrow morning and find him something to do to keep him busy until we can deal with him. And for God’s sake, tell him to take a bath!”
    I moved around her and opened the door, but she grabbed my arm before I could enter. “What?” I demanded, shaking loose of her grip.
    “You’re going out with Peter King, aren’t you? You’re going out on a date.” There was panic in her voice.
    I hated seeing her upset. She’s like a little girl whose mother leaves her on the first day of school. I put my hands on her shoulders and forced her to look in my eyes. Again, I spoke slowly. “Maral, what I do when we’re not together is no business of yours, unless I choose to make it so. Yes, I’m spending the evening with Peter, and when he arrives—after you’ve had a shower—you’re going to greet him like my personal assistant and stop acting like a child. What’s gotten into you?”
    “It’s him, Ovsanna. You shouldn’t be seeing him. He’s a cop and he knows what you are. You can’t trust him.”
    “That’s ridiculous. He helped save our lives two weeks ago. He saw my clan, the Vampyres of Hollywood, and he saw Lilith and Ghul and every one of those Ancients and weres we were battling. He killed some of them, for God’s sake. And he hasn’t said a word to anyone. Nor will he. I trust him already.”
    “No, Ovsanna! You give him enough time to think about what he knows and he’s going to have to tell someone. He’s a cop, and that’s got to come first. And he’s a man. He’ll turn on you if he has to. They all do!” She was pleading with me, yelling in my face. “He can’t be trusted!”
    I grabbed her face with my hand and dug my fingers into her jaw. She couldn’t move her mouth. Her eyes filled with tears. I held her like that.
    “Breathe, Maral. Calm down and breathe.” She did what I said. Her eyes softened and her face went slack. I released her jaw. Her cheeks were red with my fingerprint. I pushed her hair off her forehead and said as gently as I could, “He’s become my friend, Maral. I want you to accept that. If he does something to betray my trust, I’ll turn my back on him—instantly. But until then, I want him around. Do you understand?” When she got out of control like this, I had to talk to her like a child.
    She didn’t answer. Like a child.
    It was a scene we’d played out many times before, in one form or another. Maral doesn’t have a lot of self-worth. She doesn’t know she’s valuable simply because she’s a good person. She has to rely on her position as my assistant to make her feel important. She needs the adulation and ass kissing that comes with being with me—the reflected glory—to help her believe she’s worthwhile. I suppose it’s the same mind-set that keeps the wives of all those philandering Republicans standing in the back on the dais while their husbands utter their mea culpas for CNN.
    So Maral can share me with my career, but if anything else, anyone else, takes my attention, she sees it as a threat to her place in my life. And without me, she doesn’t think she exists. I’ve spent years trying to reassure her. It’s exhausting. More and more these days I just lay down the law.
    “And I’d prefer it if you spent the night at the Malibu house. I’d like to have some privacy when Peter and I come back.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    What the hell was I going to do with Ovsanna on a date? The woman’s a movie star—more than that, she’s